Below is a guest post from Ellen over at handmade recess. Ellen is an internet friend - turned real life friend. She's my everything friend. We go running together, she sharpens me & we pray together, she has taught me literally everything I know about running a small in-home business, and our kids love each other. I love her & praise God for her. Enjoy & love her as much as I do! ...............Hi! I'm Ellen, the handmade recess girl. I'm so thankful to be here with y'all today. The basics? I'm a married mom of three. My husband works for a residential children's home and we live right next door. It's kind of crazy good. I try to keep up with my little business, handmade recess, where I make bags and wallets and various pretty things out of fabric. My shop is closed right now as I'm restocking for fall and winter but I plan to reopen it next week. You can see a tiny preview of my fall and winter products right here.

Keeping a business that centers around creativity as been a huge journey for me. One that has been challenging some deep seeded fears that I've harbored for a long time.

I struggle with being timid. Fearful. A perfectionist. And somewhere along the way I swallowed the lie that it's better to just not try than to fail. Failing became crippling for me.

But. God has not given me that spirit of timidity and He's been rubbing my heart raw as he draws that out of me.

Fear of failure keeps you from connecting with others and stepping into a new season and the beauty of surrender. I've learned that I'm much more afraid of not stepping into a season God has appointed for me than I am of falling on my face. The Lord has a plan for my gifts, one that does not involve hiding them as too precious to be shared.

There have been major fails. I could easily look around and see all of the people who are better at life and business and creativity than me. I could easily walk around shadowed by rejection.

Instead, God is sweetly leading me to see that failure is just part of His story for us. When I turn to Him with the realization that every good gift is given well and even hard things become beautiful in Him, I enter into sweet fellowship with Christ whose grace covers over all of my shortcomings.

In the end, it's not about me and my failure. It's about Him picking me up. And that's beautiful.

.......Sometimes in my head, I call Ellen "e-bug" because that's what I call Elias and it just comes out sometimes in my head. Don't tell her. Isn't she wise?Isn't she lovely? Also, you can pray for Ellen and I as we ask the Lord about embarking on a new endeavor together. But don't get your hopes up, cause He might say no.